Why I Wanted to Continue Skiing - Henry Snider
My name is Henry Snider and I grew up in St. Paul, MN. I learned to ski with the Minnesota Youth Ski League and then raced for Endurance United and Mounds Park Academy where like many Minnesotans I did cross country, skiing and track. After high school I went to Michigan Tech to study mechanical engineering and continue both my running and skiing careers. I think my decision to go to Michigan Tech was easy because it was one of the only schools that would allow me to both run and ski while also studying engineering which were all things I wanted to do. At the end of last ski season I decided I wanted to continue skiing and decided to join the Team Birkie continental team.
Racing to a PR Senior Year
In high school I had a lot of success in all three sports and wanted to continue both running and skiing in college. At Michigan Tech I skied for all four years and ran cross country for my last three seasons and track my senior year. Throughout college I had plenty of ups and downs by qualifying for NCAA championships in both cross country and skiing my sophomore year and then missing out on both my junior year. After that disappointing junior season I wasn't sure what my future athletic career would look like. Feeling pretty burnt out from skiing by the end of the season I decided to focus much more on running over the summer leading into my senior year while still skiing a few times a week. This continued into the fall where I increased my weekly mileage from around 50 miles a week to 80 miles during my largest weeks of the year while continuing to do one or two rollerskis a week. This increased focus in running paid off with an improvement of 40 seconds in an 8k and all-conference honors.
Racing NCAA championships senior year
With this increased fitness, I went into the ski season with the goal of qualifying for NCAA championships again and enjoying what I was planning to be my last year of competitive skiing. The early season results weren't especially good but I was enjoying both training and racing much more than I had in previous years and started to consider racing post college. By the time I got to regionals I was in the same position as the year before as the alternate on the NCAA team but with the ability to qualify with two good races that weekend. Going into the weekend I had decided that I did want to ski after college and that if I qualified for NCAA’s I would join Team Birkie, I then had two good races at regionals and qualified for NCAA’s and committed to skiing post college.
I think the largest change I had last year was purely enjoying every aspect of the sport more and looking forward to going to practice and races more than I had in previous years. For the first time since high school I was enjoying parts of the sport besides just racing well and just enjoying being outside being active with teammates while also training hard. With this new mindset as well as the racing improvements I had last year, I knew I still had more to prove in the sport and wanted to continue training and racing at a high level post college. When I was given the opportunity to joining Team Birkie I accepted it and have been enjoying it a lot so far and 100% believe I made the correct decision.
Whole team celebrating a CCSA win
Enjoying the first day on snow last day
